Unbreakable
by LauraHuntORI
Summary: What does it mean, to become a man? At the tender age of 14, Nick Barkley grows up. Based on the story Nick tells Danny in Season 3, episode 25: Run of the Savage.
1. Chapter 1

** Author's Note: **_Manhood is the defeat of childhood narcissism. – _David Gilmore

**Disclaimer: **Owed, not owned.

* * *

"What do you want me to do, Vee? Do you want me to beat him with a broomstick? Is that what you want?"

Mother's voice was an indistinct murmur, unlike Father's, which had carried clear across the yard to where their appalled middle son, who suspected he was the subject of their talk, had been making his discontented way back to the house after finishing the extra chores he'd been assigned.

Suddenly, the unfairness of the extra work he'd had to do seemed less important in light of this new threat.

"He's too old for that, Vee. It's SELF-discipline he needs, not something imposed by you and me. Do you want to still be shaking your finger at him when he's thirty? When he's _fifty_?

Nick, standing outside on the verandah frankly eavesdropping now, took a deep breath. He was nearly a man. In a few short years no one would talk of beating him without getting Nick's fists back… but he knew Father and Mother were disappointed in him. Jarrod would be, too, he supposed, when he heard of it… _if _he heard of it.

He sighed and shook his head. God knew he was sorry. He just got so angry sometimes…

Father and Mother were still talking, but now both voices were merely indistinguishable murmurs, so Nick rounded the corner to the door. Sorry or not, he was hungry and wanted his supper.

* * *

The horse was purple. Not purple like the cushions a king sits on, but… a pale sort of purple gray that bordered on lavender. Or a storm cloud made of lilacs. Half-mourning, he remembered Mother calling a dress she had that was that color. An irregular blaze widened out to baldness past the gruella's cheekbones and down to his pink nose. The pale blue eyes regarded the lanky youth with disfavor.

"He's a beauty," Nick breathed. "Can I…" he didn't know even how to articulate his longing, and he knew he was still in disgrace with Father, and probably would be for some time. The answer to any request would be no. He cleared his throat. "I could bed him down for you," he offered tentatively, eyes on the ground, where the stallion's hoof scraped nervously at the gravel.

"Nicholas."

_How many times would he have to say he was sorry? How many punishments would he have endure… patiently? _

Father's voice was firm, but very quiet, giving the order. "Look at me, son." And order it was, undoubtedly.

_As many as it took, until Father trusted him again. _As ordered Nick's eyes rose to meet his father's.

Nick's eyes looked brown from a distance, but were really hazel: a dark green starburst overlay the dark matte brown of his irises, invisible unless you were right on top of him in a good light, just as Tom's own eyes, seemingly blue, yet contained nearly invisible snowflake traceries of brown and green.

"You will indeed bed him down," Tom told his son, "for he belongs to you."

Whatever lingering resentment or teenage sense of the unfairness of things Nick had been harboring was blown away in a wave of love so intense he felt tears prick his eyes. Father had forgiven him! He blinked and focused watering eyes on the purple dorsal stripe that ran down the stallion's back. He had not known horses came in that color. He was magnificent. Not a horse for a boy.

A fine stallion for man.

"Thank you, Father," he breathed, almost unbelieving.

"His name is Outlaw, Nicholas," his father told him seriously, "and the day you learn to ride this animal, you'll become a man." _And I hope it's soon,_ Tom thought, but didn't say, _before you drive your mother and myself insane. _

A black gloved hand reached out to stroke the pink nose. Strong white teeth nipped at the leather-covered fingers.

"Be careful," Tom cautioned. "He owns no master either."

Nick Barkley stood still, looking at his beautiful stallion, fingers cautiously out of reach. _Either? _

But his mind wasn't really on his father's cryptic statement. Not with the pale blue eye of the wonderful stallion on him. "Come on, boy," he whispered, "let me show you your new home."

Boy and stallion headed for the stable.

Tom stood watching until they were out of sight and earshot.

"What have you done?"

"What you wanted," he told his wife.

"I didn't want this," she hissed from behind him. "That horse will kill him."

Tom Barkley turned to regard his missus. "Have you so little faith in our son?"

"Richard Snow told me about that horse, he—"

"Nick can handle him," Tom interrupted.

"He's a boy!"

One corner of her husband's mouth turned up in a wry, almost sad, smile. "He won't be for long."


	2. Chapter 2

** Author's Note: **_The trick to breaking horses is, after you get bucked off, keep gettin' back on 'til the horse gets bored. – _Marshall Trimble

**Disclaimer: **Not owned, but owed.

* * *

The purple stallion was both blessing and curse.

Complaints from the neighbors about Nick's wildness and arrogance had ceased.

Complaints from the shopkeepers and bartenders in town about their middle son throwing his sleight weight around in their establishments was a thing of the past.

On the other hand, complaints from the hands that Nick was driving them nuts pestering them for advice about how to deal with his new stallion had begun.

Nick, who had already graduated from the local grammar school, rarely left the ranch anymore. Any time he wasn't doing his regular ranch work, he was working with Outlaw, reading every book his father possessed on the care and feeding of the equine race, or grilling the older hands on what they knew about the matter.

Nothing was too good for Nick's new mount.

… not that Outlaw would allow him to mount. He bucked wildly as soon as anyone came near him with either rope or saddle.

He would stand, four square, lavender-gray mane falling over his forehead as though it had been cut into windswept bangs, blue eyes snapping, barrel chest heaving, while the young man groomed him, but one wrong move, and—Bam! a muscular shoulder was ramming the youth, strong white teeth were nipping at him, raised hooves were nicking him, leaving bruises a darker purple than Outlaw's dorsal stripe.

Nick learned, perforce, to be patient, to be careful, to modulate the pronounced tones his voice usually held.

And there were compensations.

Mother often came out to the corral to talk to him now, to bring him lemonade, to ask how it was going. The same as he had seen her do all his life with Father.

Nick's chest puffed with pride. He was a man now, like Father, with a man's job, and a man's worries. He smiled at Mother, and she smiled back. The two of them watched the temperamental gruella playing with Nick's favorite cutting horse Coco.

Everything would be all right, eventually.

Outlaw would accept the saddle, Nick's bruises would fade, and the middle Barkley son would enjoy the fruits of his newfound manhood.

Quite soon.

He was sure of it.

* * *

**_'Neigh-eh-eh will kill you!' _**Outlaw screamed, an unearthly sound. It had started as a squeal, then risen to a roar.

Nick fell back, more amazed than dismayed, astounded by the awesome power of the striped hooves, as they hammered blow after blow on the old saddle, knocking the horn flying, breaking pommel from seat, driving the cantle into the dirt. He threw himself bodily over the corral fence to escape the stallion's savagery.

Outlaw would not back down. This was **_his _**corral! **_His! _**_Not that vile, hateful saddle's! It could go, but since it wouldn't go, it could die! **Die! Whump! Die! BAM! Crack! Bam!**_

It was dead at last. Dead.

Outlaw blew air at it to make sure.

It was dead.

He stood over the broken pieces of it triumphantly and screamed and screamed and screamed his victory.

The noise drew the hands from their work, Tom from his account books, Victoria from her sewing, even Silas from preparing supper.

Silas said it best. "Mr. Barkley, there's a devil in that horse."

Tom said nothing. He had eyes and ears only for his son, who had eyes and ears only for the purple stallion and the saddle he'd just obliterated.

Victoria, seeing her husband wasn't going to reply, undertook to do so herself. "Silas, you said a mouthful."


	3. Chapter 3

** Author's Note: **_What would you have me do? Give out? Give up? Give in?_ -The Lion in Winter, James Goldman

**Disclaimer: **Not owned, but owed.

* * *

Nick was tireless. Or rather, he was _very _tired, but kept on anyway.

There was no nice way to say it: the purple horse was _mean_.

_"He's **mine**!" _Nick's heart replied stubbornly. _Mine._

When a thing belonged to Nick, he loved it. Outlaw was objectively a beautiful animal, but even had he been as ugly as Mariano's mother's old donkey El Pollino, he would have been beautiful to Nick, the middle Barkley son brooded, just because he was his own.

He felt a newly familiar ache and rubbed his breastbone in an effort to sooth it. Anything worth having is worth working for, Father always said. He just had to be patient.

Outlaw was his, but he was not gentle.

He was spirited.

_Mean_-spirited.

If he could just get the stallion to _trust _him... Nick spent all the time he could with the big gruella with just that goal in mind. He abandoned the huge wood paneled bedroom he'd fought so hard to be given and had all but moved into the barn.

His reward was that he'd finally convinced the temperamental equine to accept a hackmore. A bridle was out of the question: Outlaw considered a bit, if anything, several degrees more vile than a saddle.

He could snap a lead rein onto Outlaw's hackamore, mount Coco, and the three of them would ride like the wind.

Those were the times Nick was happy, racing along the north ridge with the two big animals, laughing and free, as if the horses had wings and the three of them were flying.

...but then he would think of what Father had said, and he wanted to _ride_ the purple stallion and be a man.

And he couldn't.

He couldn't ride Outlaw.

No matter how badly he wanted to, nor how hard he tried.

Really, he was no use as a horse, in the conventional sense: he couldn't be ridden.

He was a test, or a goal, or... or some other word Jarrod would know but Nick didn't.

He would ride the purple stallion, Nick vowed, if it was the last thing he did.

* * *

Jarrod, home from college for the "short" break between terms, stroked the stallion's pink nose.

Outlaw whuffled his approval.

Nick refused to be hurt by it, but touched his breast over his heart, as though the big muscle that pumped blood through the young cowboy's body were tender. _It doesn't mean anything, _he thought, but felt his brows lowering, felt himself frowning as he watched his older brother fondling his, Nick's, own stallion that Father had given him.

_Mine!_

Nick raised his own black gloved hand to fondle the white face and pink nose as Jarrod was doing, and got nipped for his pains. "Darn it!" He pulled off the glove in order to suck on his stinging fingers. "I hate it when he does that!"

Outlaw tossed his head and whinnied.

Seeing it, Nick's breath caught. "Look how beautiful he is, Jarrod. How fine."

"I see." The older boy's lack of additional comment said everything, if Nick had had the ears to hear it.

The younger boy kept trying, as if he thought the stallion could understand his praise. "He would make an excellent horse god, if we were back in Greek or Roman times, don't you think so?" Nick's knowledge of mythology was weak, but Jarrod knew about those kinds of things. Book-learning… and the stallion was merciless, like a god.

Jarrod nodded. "From what Mother says, I'd say he'd be a fit stallion for the Mares of Diomedes."

Nick had never heard of them. "Fine breeding stock, were they?"

Jarrod's smile was wry as he patted the smooth lavender neck. "They were wild horses who fed on human flesh."

The gruella's blue eyes shot his young owner an inscrutable look, perhaps considering how his flesh would taste.

It was probably the unseasonably cool breeze that caused the younger Barkley boy's shudder.

"What nonsense," Nick blustered. "Horses don't eat meat!" Clearly, Pappy was just jealous.


End file.
